Junior Level News

The Juniors have had a very busy start to Term Two. It has been fantastic to watch the children grow and learn and continue to form friendships with each other in our Junior hub.

Juniors have been enthusiastic in their learning and it has been great to see them share their opinions and answer questions thoughtfully during learning time. They are all engaging in a positive way with each other and the older students are being a great role model for the younger students. 

In Reading, the Prep students have learnt a large range of letters and sounds and the cued articulation action to match the letter and sound. They are beginning to read and write short words using their sound and letter knowledge. Students are also learning to read and write ‘tricky words’ to build on the students being able to read texts. It has been fantastic to send home the readers to your child this term and we are hoping this will grow their confidence to read at both home and school. 

In Reading, the Year One students have learnt a large range of digraphs and are learning to read and spell these words. Students have also been learning about nouns, verbs, and adjectives and understanding what these special words mean and the difference between them. We have also had a focus on spelling tricky words and working with children on remembering how to spell these words. This will be a focus for this term to increase accuracy on spelling these words correctly. Students are engaged in their learning and doing a fantastic job on completing activities during class time and doing their best during InitiaLit lessons which they should all be proud of!

During Reading the Year Two students have been practising reading texts with fluency and lots of expression. We know that adding expression to strong words keeps the audience engaged and want to know more. Students have been predicting what will happen in texts by looking at the title and front cover as well as during the story to work out the ending. We have looked at adding more suffixes to our word bank and understand why we need to add suffixes to our base words and the impact it has on sentences.

In Writing, the Prep students have focused on using their sound and letter knowledge to write three letter words. They are also learning to form upper and lower case letters correctly. Students also have had the opportunity to draw pictures and orally say sentences to match their writing. We will continue to focus on students constructing short phrases using their sound and letter knowledge and also writing modelled sentences during writing time.

In Writing, students in Year One and Two have been writing recounts and procedures. Students have been taught explicitly the features of these texts and are exploring how to write these texts with correct structure. We have also presented sentence starters and pictures to students to promote creativity in the students' writing and this has been a fantastic way for students to come up with their own ideas which  they really have enjoyed. Students are also learning to edit their writing and forming sentences with correct punctuation. We will continue to work on reading back their own writing as this is an important part of the writing process. 

In Mathematics, the children have been learning about number concepts. We have learnt about solving addition problems using a range of strategies such as the count on strategy. The Preps and Year Ones used concrete materials to help solve the addition problems correctly. We also have been learning about Data and Representation this week. Students collected data from their classmates using tally marks and then used this data to create simple graphs. Students also interpreted the data and discussed their findings with their classmates.

During Religion lessons, students have been exploring the events following Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Sunday. Putting together a timeline of Jesus appearing to his Apostles and spending forty days with them before going up to heaven during the Ascension. Students have focused on the importance of the following story of Pentecost where the Apostles were filled with the holy spirit to spread the good news. We will be continuing into looking at scripture of examples of loving one another.

In the Biological Science unit ‘Living Things’ the students in Prep have been exploring the external features of animals and classifying them into groups. They have  also been learning about what living things need to survive and the importance of water for survival. Students discussed why it is important to drink water and have  looked at the different stages of the water cycle. 

In the Biological Science unit ‘Living Things’ the students in Year One and Year 2 have been exploring the basic needs of plants and animals to meet their needs for survival. Students have conducted an experiment on what a plant needs to survive with variables such as too much water, correct water, no sunlight, no water and little water. Students needed to make both predictions and observations and draw their findings, which they enjoyed watching the changes. Students are now beginning to create dioramas  showing an animal's habitat  including what the animal needs to survive. They are at the planning stage of this and we can’t wait to see the final products!

In our Social and Emotional learning, students have focused on ways to interact with each other in a positive way. They have learned about kindness and discussed ways that we can be a good friend to others. We have also discussed ways of solving problems using positive language to support this process. 

Sarah O'Hara, Marie Georgiadis, Taylor Butler

Junior Team Teachers